Forest Law and Tenure Regularization Policies in Northwest Argentina: Comparative Policy Networks and Discourse Analysis Study of Salta and Santiago Del Estero

International organizations consider land tenure clarification the first step to enhance sustainable forest management but this is not a sufficient condition for sustainable forest management nor for reducing deforestation. The Gran Chaco Americano is the second biggest forest in Latin America and the third agricultural frontier after the Amazon and the Brazilian Cerrado. The Argentinean Chaco, in North-West Argentina, has experienced one of the highest deforestation rates over the past decades. Individuals mostly and only in small part the state owns the forest. The majority of its inhabitants, namely small cattle rangers and aboriginal communities have no official land property title. In 2007, Argentina issued a Minimum Standards for the Environmental Protection of Native Forests (Law 26.331, Forest Law) establishes the rules governing native forests use. One of the law instrument of the forest law is payment for ecosystem services scheme. The general condition to access to this fund is having property rights (Aguiar et al, 2018) however, what exactly property rights varies at provincial level. The province of Salta and Santiago del Estero have opposite interpretation of property titles as the former only allows access to the fund those that have official land title while the latter to those that can prove the use of the land (posedores). At national level, indigenous communities and small-scale cattle ranchers represent only 2% of the forest law fund beneficiaries. This paper aims at identifying different discourses and perspectives, as well as conflicts over implementation of current policies on land tenure regularization in Santiago del Estero and Salta provinces. The objective is to understand whether a different tenure and environment theory of the key policy actors in both context influence the possibility to access payment for ecosystem services funds. We study this complex policy arena using social network analysis and adopting a mixed methods approach. We combine the study of policy networks’ topology with the analysis of stakeholders’ discourses to understand whether different stakeholders cluster around similar understanding of land tenure regularization processes and instruments. Our preliminary results suggest first that land tenure regularization policies implementation build around the ambiguity of what land tenure regulation means for different stakeholders. Second, the lack common agreement among of indigenous communities and small-scale cattle ranchers affects the possibility of these actors to benefit from payment for ecosystem services besides the presence of different province forest laws.